color denial?

or lack of blog fodder? either way, if you ask me what my favorite color is, i'd tell you it's purple-so why is my sweater, ipod case and iphone case all pink-if you look in my closet, there is a distinct absense of purple-hmmmmm. the things you notice when you're sitting in traffic listing to the knitmore girls podcast (which i'm loving, thanks mary!)-jasmin, by the way has- you guessed it hot pink hair!

bjorn and some updates

santa made an early stop yesterday, meet "bjorn" my husqvarna Sapphire850-sewing, quilting and embroidery machine (very minimal embroidery capability). unless someone can suggest a more manly swedish name, bjorn it has been christened. i did a bit of sewing with it last night at quilt club, and it is vastly different from my singer. love it! look forward to adding some umph to my quilts.

basement update: it's coming along, steve is finishing the project from this point, painting done, duct work nearly done, and some of the ceiling done,. completion date is around november 9, hope to be able to get things moved back into place when i get back from nyc. i've uploaded a few pictures of the paint colors onto flickr as that's the only real noticeable update you can see.
knitting update: am making strides in the knitting arena, updated photos are on flickr and ravelry. i've also queued ruby red and girl friday from fall 2009 knitty. i hope to get the yarn for ruby red while i'm in nyc, doesn't look like it requires much and it calls for sock yarn.
quilting update: can't show photos yet, but have finished 2, and one is nearly done. the halloween wall hanging is on flickr. i like how it came out, and i learned some secrets to straight intersections while working on this project.
cross-country is finished except for regional/state meets. today was the first meet i was able to go to, and it was freezing! it was 46 degrees when we left acworth at 7am and it was 46 degrees when kathy and i got back at noon, and it's still about the same temp now!

have also been listening to podcast-thanks mary, and am really enjoying the knitmore girls. am trying to get download some of the old ones onto my ipod so i can listen on my way to work-great idea as always! enjoy your weekend and stay warm.

common threads.

joyce is holding a book that shows you have to make baskets from scrap yarn-she's doing the research and development on this future dixie star project-stay tuned.

who'd have thought that quilting could lead to such a wonderful bonding experience-the dixie star first weekend away was exactly that. we fully intend on doing this again next year, same time, same place. more photos on flickr. we laughed, walked, worked, and cried (joyce found out her son enlisted with the army, so there was a serious mommy moment, but we got through it). since we got back i got to thinking about how much we have in common:

~we all love quilting (obviously!)

~we go to the same church (where we all met)

~3 of us knit and crochet (i only crochet when necessary)

~we all love to do crafts (cards, fabric and fibre, etc)

~3 of us have sons-3 of us have daughters (i'm not in that group)

~ 2 of us have adopted daughters from asia (kathy and joyce)

~3 of us have middles schoolers at the same school

~4 of us have 5 high schoolers between us (4 of the 5 are at the same school)

~2 of us teach 5 years olds and younger (i used to teach those who acted like 5 year olds!)

~we have one engineer (brenda)

~ 2 are from the north and 2 are from the south

~we all love to travel

~3 of us have dogs

~we like to eat!

~we all have husbands who don't get the whole craft thing, but don't begrudge us our time to indulge ourselves in these activities.

hmmm, i guess that's about it, we really did have a great time, just doing our own thing. here's to many more times together. oh, and the 2010 quilt shop hop is march 18-21, and it includes 12 shops! we're in the planning stages to figure out our plan of attack!

short listed.

i made the short list for using this photo-independence hall in philadelphia. now i know how mary feels to have someone you're not related to seeing your pictures. well i've got to finish packing for hilton head-soooo looking forward to the next 4.5 days, and am planning my "staycation" the following week. i could get spoiled with this!

TTNF

it's not central park.

but it was the best i could do. had plans on thursday to meet keri for dinner, and was also able to fit in a very nice walk around midtown which included a trip through piedmont park. it was a beautiful afternoon. after a quick shower at the office as it was a tad bit warm at 4:30. we had dinner here-good food, wine and company. always fun to get caught up. made plans to get together again next month. got a chuckle when keri took her heels off for the photo, i still have mine on!

same lake next day

lake allatoona after the water finally stopped coming down, still very high, but at least it's not the white water rapids shown yesterday. no school tomorrow, as a lot of the roads to the west and southwest of us are still underwater, a well-traveled bridge between county line and mars hill road is gone. and i'm sure there are others that need to be tested as well. my drive into town and home were fairly easy. i am very grateful that we have faired as well as we did.

water.

here's a couple photos taken from highway 92 today on the way home:
lake allatoona-hard to believe that a year ago it was down to about nothing.
lake acworth-not the best shot, but definitely higher than it normally should be
got home to find that the water issue we discovered yesterday-that caused a small flood, indeed can lead to a bigger flood. am grateful that there wasn't anymore water than what we had inside.
other things i'm grateful for today:
~i was able to leave work early to get home
~the boys made it home from school to the fitzpatricks then home safely-lots of roads underwater in our area
~when we moved we invested in a ton of storage containers, and have reused them for storage, thus making the actual loss minimal and relegated to a few things that were stored in cardboard
~i had dinner already prepared-heat and eat (one less thing to worry about)
~we had not installed any flooring into the new finished part of the basement, so we only had a few rugs that need to be dried out, other than that it's just drying concrete-making clean up much easier.
we'll see what overnight and tomorrow brings.